


First Light

by ishouldwritethatdown



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: ''Before Sunrise She's YOUR Daughter'', Alcohol, Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, Flashbacks, Gen, Post-Dishonored (Video Game), Reflection, Selectively Mute Corvo Attano, Sunrises, Young Emily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 11:16:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17466548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishouldwritethatdown/pseuds/ishouldwritethatdown
Summary: Corvo considers how many key moments of his life happen at dawn as he waits for the sun to rise from the top of Dunwall Tower. Does a new day bring renewal, he wonders? Or just the steady marching on of life, further and further from where you started?





	First Light

What was it about the dawn, he wondered?

The first dawn he could recall was a sunrise in the Month of Darkness, late in the morning. He and his sister weren’t allowed out of the house until the sun came up, so their mother had them do chores. They’d pinned fabric together and modelled dresses and picked apart stitches.

The sun began to streak its colours across the sky, and Corvo and Beatrici had pulled on their boots, eager to get out into the streets.

Corvo remembered the feeling of his smile disappearing when he opened the door to their little apartment and saw a Guardsman standing there, preparing to knock. Corvo watched him swallow at the sight of the children with all that light in their eyes, and asked – gently, so gently, like the Guards never did – whether their mother was home.

The pinks and golds streaking across the late morning sky felt rude and garish when his father died. How dare the city be bright? How dare the sun continue to rise, the wind continue to blow, when there was such a hole in the world?

He and his sister hadn’t gone out to play that day, or the day after. Even the light of the darkest month of the year was too much. The world should have been plunged into oblivion forever.

But the sun had continued to rise every day. He stopped, for the most part, wishing it wouldn’t, but on his last night in Karnaca, he’d made a drunken plea that he be allowed to keep dancing just a little while longer. His face had ached from smiling that morning, and his head had ached from drinking.

In a few hours, he would be on a boat bound for Dunwall. He was going to serve the Emperor in the most important estate in the Isles, all because he was such an astonishingly spectacular, masterful swordsman.

He didn’t have many friends in the Guard, but there were always people looking for an excuse to drink, and when it got around that he was leaving in the morning, an officer twice his age had thrown an arm around his shoulders and insisted that he buy him his first Serkonan ale before he departed.

“You don’t want that Gristol hogwash,” he’d said. “We’ll get you started on some proper booze. And then you’ll have to come back! Ha!”

Men and women of the Guard had bought him drinks all through the night. One of the bartenders hesitated after a burly woman ordered a particularly strong drink, eyeballing Corvo. He was only eighteen, and he’d never had a drink before – it definitely showed.

“This man,” the Guard punched a finger down on the bartop while her other hand pointed vaguely in Corvo’s direction, “is the finest swordsman in the Empire. Now get him his drink!”

And thus started the boastful nodding.

Corvo had wobbled his way to the docks with the remaining members of his party as the sun wished them good morning. It shone in his eyes, low on the horizon, and he squinted and stuck his finger up at it.

One of the others caught the sentiment and repeated it verbally, and soon the group was in a fit of hysterical, stumbling laughter. When they got to the boat, a very sober Guard stopped them, and warned them that they were in no state to be boarding boats. One of the party lurched closer, hooking an arm around Corvo as he did, and words sloshed out of him like ale from a tankard. “This here is the finest swordsman…”

Corvo pointed a thumb in his own face, when he trailed off.

The Guard eyed the lot of him up and down with a familiar look of distaste. “You’re Corvo Attano?”

He nodded, grinning. Normally the disapproving looks stung, an indication that he was still lesser than everybody else, the son of a seamstress and a lumberman, but today he didn’t care. The sun was shining, the ship was waiting, and he was the finest swordsman in the Empire. It didn’t even occur to him that the sceptical look was about the drunkenness, and not the class status.

The ship had already set sail by the time he remembered that he hadn’t said goodbye to his mother. He crawled up to the deck with nausea lapping his insides in waves, but Karnaca was already too far in the distance to make out individual people on the docks. The light reflecting off the glass windows made the city look like it was glittering.

It hurt his eyes, and he threw up over the side of the boat before curling in a corner and going to sleep.

Many more dawns passed in Dunwall Tower. The view of the sunrise was good from the roof, light creeping over Dunwall slowly, so he spent a number of mornings there. On one day in the Month of Earth, he was strapping on his boots in preparation of heading up when he heard a _thunk_ from another room, followed by a quiet fuss. Thinking that one of the younger maids sounded to be in some distress, he went to investigate and offer to help.

But what he saw was Jessamine, frozen guiltily in place, balancing two oars in her arms. She was dressed in a coat that was prettier than it was insulating, and boots that had too much of a heel to be practical for much walking. The biggest clue that she had dressed herself was that her hair was untied and wavy, instead of twisted and pinned up in the way she hated.

“Don’t tell my father,” she said, and he broke into a smile. Jessamine liked to do a lot of things unbecoming of an Empress-to-be, and this looked to be the latest one.

He took the oars from her and stood them on their ends. She thanked him with a sigh and gathered what appeared to be a picnic basket from the floor.

Corvo peeked around the corner to check that the coast was clear and when he nodded, she indicated their direction and they snuck along the corridor. “You’re not running away without me?” he teased, hands moving quickly to sign the words, and she snickered. He was comfortable enough speaking with Jessamine, but they were on a covert mission and anything they could do to be more quiet helped them.

“I just want to take a boat out on the river before the sunrise. I want one moment to myself today, before all the celebrating and the… royal… stuff.” He remembered the low dip in the cliffs that they’d skirted on a walk, and how she’d eyed the abandoned skiff that was resting on the shingle below.

The realisation smacked him in the face, and he stopped walking abruptly, causing Jessamine to look around for whatever obstacle or witness had befallen them. “Happy birthday,” he told her.

She beamed, a genuine glow that warmed his heart in his chest. “Thank you, Corvo.”

Guards patrolled and servants worked in the early hours of the morning. It was a challenge to avoid everyone, even with Corvo’s memorisation of the movements of the Tower. If caught, the guards would insist that the two of them be accompanied for “security”. It was hard to argue with them (the future Empress could hardly be too secure, after all) even though their presence was often intrusive. The staff would likely turn a blind eye if they were spotted, but they’d gossip later, and gossip could be a dangerous thing. That much, he had learned from the parties he’d had to attend at Jessamine’s side.

It took patience to avoid everyone, especially carrying two oars and a picnic basket, but they made it down to the cliff beach with the horizon only just beginning to turn pink on the eastern edge.

Corvo smiled when she was settled into the skiff, the water lapping around its bow. It was a smile that wished her well: “All set, Your Majesty,” it said. She was holding the oars – and though he was sure she knew how to use them, she hesitated.

“I don’t suppose…” she said slowly, not meeting his eyes. “…you’d like to join me, Corvo?”

Oh.

It took a moment to collect his face into the proper arrangement, a moment where he felt the sun rising higher as if it was the ticking of a clock vibrating through his bones. She was asking him to join her in her one moment of privacy today, the one she’d reserved specially for herself. The weight of that wasn’t lost on him as he smiled, nodded, and boarded the boat himself.

She rowed them out, and the sun shone down the river like it was the path it was almost meant to take, transforming the water into a road of shimmering gold. Jessamine took out two glasses – _two_ – from her picnic basket and handed both to Corvo. She popped the cork of the wine bottle she took out next; it was a bubbly white, her favourite, and she poured some out for each of them.

“A birthday toast,” she said, and Corvo raised his glass to match hers. “To many more sunrises, and many more birthdays, and many more glasses of wine.”

On Jessamine’s twenty-second birthday, they did not drink wine on the Wrenhaven in the early morning. She slept through the rising sun, with one hand protectively resting on her belly, while Corvo sat in an armchair by the window, watching the sunrise. He made sure Jessamine and her charge were in his peripheral vision the whole time.

Four months later, it was a different kind of birthday. The night had dragged on, and Corvo could no longer feel his fingers, squeezed tight by Jessamine for hours. The guards had tried to turn him away, and the midwife regarded him with scorn, but Jessamine had cried out for him, stretched out her hand, and he had been by her side.

There was a burnt orange rim on the horizon of the dark sky when the baby’s umbilical cord was cut, and Jessamine fought to keep her eyes open, not wanting to take her eyes off her daughter for a moment. Even the sunrise stood still in that second, waiting, hoping, praying.

The Princess took a deep breath and yelled.

There was a cheer around the room, and Corvo would only imagine that his smile was as radiant as Jessamine’s. The baby was passed to the wet nurse, who rocked her quiet, and the sun continued rising, washing warmth over Dunwall.

“The betting pools on her name have started,” Corvo signed later, joining Jessamine on the bed. The sun had long-since risen. The baby was being looked after by a healthy battalion of nurses and maids, and Jessamine had been left alone to rest in her chamber on doctor’s orders.

She had shared a look with him before he left, well-known by now; a request for company. He wasn’t sure that the special glance had been totally lost on Sokolov, but he didn’t comment, and soon he was gone. It was easy to swing down to the windowsill from the roof, and so that’s what Corvo had done, bringing the sunlight into the room with him.

Jessamine hummed thoughtfully, sleepily, and asked him what the top contenders were.

Beatrix was the number one wager. Corvo knew as soon as he heard it that a large number of people would be losing their money. Jessamine loved and missed her mother, but she had no intention of naming her daughter after her. She herself was named after her grandmother, and she disliked it strongly, regardless of her grandmother’s character. Sharing a name with someone invited comparison, and she did not want that for her child.

One of the nurses had suggested Aurora, after the dawn she was born under, and others had jumped on board. Jessamine laughed softly at that; she was born in the dark, not the sunlight, at least as far as ten hours of labour was concerned.

That brought him to the next suggestion; he spelled out L-E-L-A. It was a Serkonan name that meant “born at night.”

Jessamine seemed to consider it. “I like that,” she admitted. “But it won’t be her forename. I hope these bets have clauses about middle names.”

Clearly, she had already made up her mind. Corvo gave his most inquisitive smile, and she smiled back. “Emily Drexel… _Lela_ Kaldwin.”

Drexel. A surname from the south. A commoner’s name.

His mother’s.

The Attano name would end with him. His father had been an only child, and the only cousin on his grandfather’s side had married into a different name. His parents were gone, his sister had disappeared years ago, and he would never marry or have children he could call his own. He might be remembered as the Royal Protector of Empress Jessamine Kaldwin, but that was all his legacy would amount to.

He had made peace with that.

But apparently, Jessamine hadn’t. She had found his mother’s maiden name, a name so common as to be completely inconspicuous, and passed it on to her daughter. _Their_ daughter.

He felt tears gather in his eyes, and Jessamine gushed, “Oh!” in response and covered her face. “Stop, you’ll set me off.”

Growing up, Emily had proven again and again that she was a child of the night and not the day. She would give her caretakers the run-around late into the night, and often be awake before the sun rose.

Jessamine and Corvo knew this because she always came straight to them.

With fondness, he recalled one early morning before he slipped back into his own chambers, Emily bursting into the room and startling both of her parents. In all their years together, the toddler was the only one to have caught them asleep in the same bed.

“Play with me!” she would demand, bouncing on the bed and crushing Corvo’s feet with her tiny (but ferocious) jumps.

“Your daughter is being unruly again,” Jessamine had mumbled into her pillow.

While Emily continued to jump on him and chant, he answered in a series of signs that Jessamine took care to watch despite how little she wanted to be awake. He used the sign for not understanding, and then indicated himself and his humble bodyguard status. Any rumours which implied he had an improper relationship with the Empress...

“I’m the Empress and I command you,” she argued, in the sleepiest and least authoritative voice he’d ever heard.

She was too cute when she was tired.

He and Emily had zoomed around the halls of Dunwall Tower until the sun rose. It had been a good warmup, more enjoyable than the ones the Watch conducted in the courtyard. Whatever nonsensical game she had devised was lost to time, but he remembered her giggles fondly.

Just as the sky was turning light enough to read by, she started flagging and yawning and eventually slowed down until she wandered right into his outstretched arms with her eyelids drooping over her eyes.

“Oh no, you got me,” she yawned, and she snuggled into his chest as he carried her back to bed. She slept through the rest of the sunrise and would not be woken until the day was nearing noon.

The tears in his eyes felt different now, years later, than they had before. The water felt colder. Sharper. So much had changed.

His first dawn outside of Coldridge Prison had been with a new itch on the back of his hand. He’d started his search for Emily feeling the cold and the dark on his skin, but just like the day she was born, her presence filled the world with light and warmth. He’d found himself smiling more than he had in months just seeing the way she chattered and skipped around the place, asking pointed questions to grown-ups that didn’t know they needed to prepare interesting answers when they talked to Princess Emily Drexel Lela Kaldwin.

“Corvo?”

An Empress wasn’t expected to have to ask permission to enter anywhere. If the Empress commanded something, it was expected to happen. But right now, Emily was asking Corvo for permission to join him on the rooftop. Corvo would never turn her away; perhaps she’d learn that someday, or perhaps she already had. It was nice of her to ask, regardless.

She joined him sitting down when he gave her a nod, and she pulled her cardigan tighter around herself, shivering at the wind. Under the thin cotton was her silk nightclothes – she never seemed to remember that the night-time air was cold. Tutting and smiling softly, he pulled his coat off and draped it around her shoulders.

“Thank you, Corvo.” She pulled the hood up over her ears to keep the wind from rubbing them red, and looked out over Dunwall. Surveying her sleeping kingdom. “Did you used to come up here with Mother?” she asked.

He shook his head and pointed at the Wrenhaven River, wide and dark.

“You used to go on the river? Like, on a boat?” she seemed surprised. He smiled and nodded.

She yawned, but didn’t let it stop her talking: “Maybe Samuel could take us out for boat rides some time. I don’t think he’d mind.”

Corvo didn’t think he would, either. Maybe river cruises with Samuel and Emily would be good – new memories for new times. If the City Watch were prepared to let the young Empress out on the river without a whole galleon of guardsmen tailing the skiff.

Emily leaned into his shoulder while the edge of the sky washed itself red. Blood on the flagstones…

He closed his eyes and let his breath leave him. Maybe he wasn’t prepared to see this view again, in a world without Jessamine.

“Hey Corvo, look what I can do.”

Emily was curling her tongue. From the glee in her eyes, he could tell she was very proud of herself, looking up at Corvo and grinning when she saw that he was, indeed, watching. “Leh!” she said, pointing at her mouth. Bright white light had started to poke out of the horizon nestled amongst the pinks and oranges.

He couldn’t help but chuckle at her antics, so simple and yet so rebellious for the youngest Empress the Isles had ever had. The rising sun caught in her eyes and made her glow, and her giggle only made the air grow warmer.

Corvo puffed out his cheeks and crossed his eyes. Her contagious laugh made him break the pose, and she begged him to do it again. When he did, she was less giddy and more scrutinous, and she tried to copy him. Her eyelids came down over her eyes as she stared at the tip of her nose and made her look instead very serious and pensive.

“Am I doing it?” she asked.

Corvo held in a laugh, and debated whether to tell her yes. She had been told off a lot when she was younger for making funny faces in court – now that she was an Empress she had promised to stop. It was unlikely that anyone would ever see this valiant attempt except him.

He took too long deciding, and she saw the look on his face. She huffed, “Not even close. What kind of an Empress can’t even cross her eyes?”

He let his laugh escape him while she leaned in close for a hug, and for a moment he could imagine that there was nothing else in the Empire but him, his daughter, and the gently rising dawn of a new day.

**Author's Note:**

> this is sort of another go at a concept that originally turned into New Horizons.. i hope you like it! i'm more satisfied with how this version turned out although i do have a soft spot for the old fic.
> 
> shoutout to Sea for coming up with the whole "please deal with our unruly daughter" "any rumours you may have heard..." "i'm the Empress go deal with her it is 4am" interaction ahjdfksf ily
> 
> EDIT: I made it more overt that Corvo's "speaking" is mostly using signs. My personal HC is that he's most frequently comfortable talking verbally with family, but they're also the least likely to need verbal confirmation because they understand him very well.


End file.
